ABOUT CLASSIFICATION OF LAWS TO THE UNITED STATES CODE

During the past 20 years, each Congress has enacted an average
of over 6,900 pages of new public laws. Because the United States Code
contains only the general and permanent laws of the United States, not
every provision contained in those public laws goes into the Code. The
Office of the Law Revision Counsel (“OLRC”) reviews every provision of
every public law to determine whether it should go into the Code, and
if so, where. This process is known as U.S. Code classification.

Once a bill is passed by both the U.S. House of Representatives
and Senate, it is enrolled and prepared for presentment to the
President. As soon as the enrolled bill becomes available, attorneys
in the OLRC carefully read through it. The attorneys look for both
amendments to laws already in the Code and for any non-amendatory
provisions (referred to as “freestanding provisions”) that are general
and permanent. If a provision amends a section or statutory note in
the Code, it is classified to that section or note. For freestanding
provisions, the classification decision is more challenging.

While some laws that may affect the Code are small and cover
only one subject, many laws are large, cover a multitude of subjects,
and contain a complicated mixture of amendatory and freestanding
provisions, general and special provisions, and permanent and
temporary provisions. In addition, even a single freestanding
provision that is general and permanent can relate simultaneously to a
number of different chapters and titles in the Code. Since
freestanding provisions are not typically drafted with the Code in
mind, it is primarily the responsibility of the OLRC’s classifying
attorneys to determine whether and how they will be classified to the
Code.

Making such a determination first involves deciding whether or
not a provision is general and permanent in its nature. For example, a
provision defining a certain action as a Federal crime is general
while one naming a post office is not. A provision requiring an agency
to submit a report to Congress every year from now on is permanent
while one making a one-year appropriation is not. Deciding whether or
not to include these types of provisions in the Code is simple, but
making the decision in other cases can be more difficult. Is a
provision implementing a free trade agreement with Jordan general in
its nature? Is one establishing a new initiative scheduled to expire
after 7 years permanent in its nature? Judgments must be made in cases
like these, and the decision to include or not include such provisions
in the Code is heavily influenced by precedent—what has been done in
the past with similar provisions.

Once it has been determined that a freestanding provision
should be included in the Code, the decision on where to place it
depends not only on the subject matter but also on various technical
considerations. If a number of related freestanding provisions in a
public law are tied together with definitions, mutual cross
references, or a common effective date and comprise the entire law or
a distinct title of the law, those provisions would likely be
classified as a new chapter at the end of the (non-positive) Code
title that relates most closely to the subject matter of the
provisions. If only one or two freestanding provisions from a law are
to be classified to the Code, they would likely be placed somewhere
within an existing chapter. The Code title being affected also
dictates the placement of the freestanding provisions. Non-positive
law titles can have new sections, chapters, and statutory notes added
to them editorially. Positive law titles, however, can have new
sections and chapters added to them only by Congress by way of a
direct amendment. Therefore, a freestanding provision that belongs
within a positive law title based on its subject matter will be
classified as a statutory note under a section of that title.

Statutory notes are provisions from laws that are placed in the
Code so as to follow the text of a Code section (or, occasionally, to
precede the first section of a chapter). A statutory note can consist
of as much as an entire law or as little as a clause. While the
decision to classify a freestanding provision as a section or a
statutory note is an editorial judgment, there are certain types of
provisions that are normally classified as notes in both positive and
non-positive law titles, such as effective dates, short titles,
savings, and statutory construction. Statutory notes also include
provisions that are somewhat less than general or less than permanent,
but still relate to existing Code sections, such as those requiring
studies and reports, implementation of regulations, or the
establishment of a task force. For more information about statutory
notes, see the
Detailed Guide to the Code.

It is important to understand that whether or not a provision
is classified to the Code, and if classified, whether or not it is set
out as a section or a statutory note, does not in any way affect the
provision's meaning or validity.

The OLRC tries to finish classifying each enrolled bill by the
time it is enacted into law and assigned a public law number. Once the
classifications are finalized for a bill and a public law number is
assigned by the Office of the Federal Register (see
Public Laws), the
classifications are published in the
Classification Tables on this
website, and copies of the classified bills are made available to the
commercial publishers of the Code, who follow them in their
publications. The OLRC also provides classifications to the Office of
the Federal Register for inclusion as side notes on the slip laws and
in the Statutes at Large.